Traditionally when we design aviaries even with the best intentions we always automatically tend to think of the longest possible flight distance, and rightly so, flight is critical to most birds and good levels of exercise are integral to the biology and health of those species. In the wild most birds would be faced with daily situations that required varied amounts of flapping, gliding, banking and slowing in three dimensions, not just two like us humans, to really consider the challenges birds face we must consider our differences rather than our similarities. This activity would make up a large portion of their mental stimulation for the day and far too many flights are designed on a very "human" two dimensional level which allows for some flight, but the real quality of that flight is questionable. Granted some species may fly far less than we tend to think, or at least expend far fewer calories doing so, but flight is very important regardless. Coupled with that, choices are crucial to good welfare, so the choice to fly or not fly is one every bird deserves, this subject could take a whole article in itself, but back on topic.
So we are designing a flight maybe long but thin, so that exercise may be taken in short bursts from one end to another, maybe we set up a larger more square flight so that varied movement can be taken across the flight and for some species this may be the best option, certainly this idea will not work everywhere, but could be better deployed with the average flying bird, be it bird of prey, large softbill, parrot or any species which might wish to maintain meaningful, sustained flight over a good period of time without constant starting and stopping.
99.5% of all bird keepers have a weakness to cake...have I lured you in yet?
Sure we can never realistically provide the complete mental stimulation of flying miles in the wild, but with this method we could at least offer the physical effects and benefits of such exercise and a clear improvement from the welfare offered by traditional to-and-fro flight designs. Even if you do not care for good welfare (AND YOU SHOULD!) it is well known that one of the biggest brick walls with fertility in captive birds is obesity through either overfeeding (very common) or lack of activity, it might make your bird sluggish, unattractive to it's partner (overweight birds are a liability) and also has massive influence on the hormone production within each sex and for those of us who value natural raising of birds this is critical (I'm not talking about just getting an egg laid, pulling, incubating, hand rearing and calling it a success here, I'm talking the art of long term support, not doing it for them but making sure everything they need to do it themselves is available year in year out). So how might we remedy such a problem? You got it, lots of good, meaningful exercise to keep birds lean, give them space to court properly and get their bodies coursing with all the right hormones and not carbs, fats and frustration, which oddly enough sooner or later can lead to aggression and in the end, failure to breed and live a normal life.
Here's where I think as a collective many of us might have missed a trick, the donut shaped flight. This is something I had come up with myself some time ago independently in my quest to allow for potentially endless exercise, but after I did a little research I found that several other people in the past decades in separate parts of the world have come to a similar conclusion and indeed some have even built such a prototype aviary with varying levels of success.
The virtues of the donut shaped flight are many, if properly designed it can not only allow a real chance at sustained exercise but provide visual barriers for birds when the bird's sheltered housing is placed in the "hole" of the donut, on a small scale a low safety porch leaving the area above still open will not block the flight path. In zoos there is plenty of opportunity to include viewing areas in place of shelters (place them somewhere else of course) offering an immersive experience for visitors, although certain species may not take well to visitor traffic in the centre of the aviary, but no doubt this idea could be used to better effect than it has been thus far.
Above - A simple and effective donut shaped flight at Olomouc Zoo in the Czech Republic
Above - From the front Olomouc zoo's donut offers decent viewing space also.
So the donut was the answer in my mind, to sustain long term flight in a confined space, but then the next issue occurred to me. Birds are generally creatures of habit and often like to do things the same way, sometimes even at their own expense, might the donut encourage it's inhabitants to only fly round it in their own preferred way and in turn produce an unbalanced physical muscle structure from constant banking flight? Maybe...
So my next thought was the racetrack flight, a flight which allowed for some straight ahead flight followed by banking at either end of the "track" this could remedy some of my concerns about hefty one sided pectoraly challenged birds. For a long time I looked for evidence of such a flight and found that nobody seemed to have constructed one at the time, but on an off chance I looked toward the East, where the great master falconers of the Arab states often have humongous sums to spend on their beloved birds of prey, and lo and behold I found something close to what I was looking for. A huge, wide racetrack shaped flight designed for exercising birds (granted not for day to day use but the design could easily be transformed) at 42 m in diameter around the curve this is an impressive flight space.
Above and Below - Large flight for birds of prey in the United Arab Emirates.
The racetrack or wide donut works very well in this context with well trained birds of prey who can be flown in either direction to make up for any overuse of muscles, but left unsupervised, it still does not address the concerns about banking in one direction over and over again, so once more the cogs were turning.
The next step seemed to be fairly obvious to me, a figure eight track, which I dubbed a "double donut" (I may come up with a variant for waterfowl and call it a "dunkin' donut"... I'm here all week.). Provided the central flight space was clear this design could be the perfect shape I was looking for, extended too to allow for some non banking flight time it could not only offer the varied exercise I wanted but also another thing... choices. Choices are the foundation of good welfare and allowing animals to express that right will improve their day to day lives, the elongated figure eight allowed for a multitude of flightpaths, not just one way or another. Birds could do a standard figure of eight banking equally in both directions during flight, they could do the same in reverse offering a whole new perspective in terms of the visual stimuli and physical obstacles the may find, they could do the same loop twice if desired and a multitude of varying combinations which ultimately makes up a better experience for the bird whilst flying. On occasion they may even have to dodge a fellow bird as they go through the central area, all very natural interactions which could increase the animals welfare and time spent "flying" considerably.
The centre of the donuts is important because visual barriers will often act as a guide to focus flight paths within aviaries, a peanut or circle shaped aviary would not result in the same sort of flight as the designs outlined here, but as mentioned earlier that space could be used for shelters, viewing areas or just left empty, but it should be there. Some success has been had with large circular flights for birds of prey, but again they would not offer the variable benefits of the "double donut" and suffer the same disadvantages as a standard donut.
Along the same lines I found another bird of prey design which at the moment I consider to be almost the "perfect" design for such an experimental flight for many other species to live within full time, although if it has been built or is just in the design stage I could not say (See below).
In the end it was clear that my idea was not as original as I had thought and had been tried here and there with some success as a full time aviary, it is still a surprise that there are not more flights like this around given the clear promise of such a design. I hope to see more in future and maybe we will discover even more of the virtues of the donut! Watch this space!
Imagine the enrichment possibilities of such a complex aviary shape... But I'll leave you with that to think about...
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